Lem, Stanislaw (25 page)

Perchance these three machines may serve in my stead—which

would have the added merit of providing Your Majesty with the

opportunity to test them."

"Let it be as you say,"

agreed the King.

Everyone assumed an attitude of the

utmost interest and expectation. Trurl brought out the first

machine—the one painted white—from the phaeton, pushed a

button, then took a seat at the side of King Genius. The machine

said:

"Here is the story of the

Multitudians, their king Mandrillion, his Perfect Adviser, and Trurl

the constructor, who built the Adviser, and later destroyed it!"

+ +

The land of the Multitudians is famous

for its inhabitants, who are distinguished by the fact that they are

multitudinous. One day the constructor Trurl, passing through

the saffron regions of the constellation Deliria, strayed a little

from the main path and caught sight of a planet that appeared to

writhe. Drawing nearer, he saw that this was due to the multitudes

that covered its surface; he landed, having found—not without

difficulty—a few square feet of relatively unoccupied

ground. The natives immediately ran up and thronged about him,

exclaiming how multitudinous they were, although, as they all talked

at once, Trurl couldn't make out a single word. When finally he

understood, he asked:

"Multitudinous, are you?"

"We are!!" they shouted,

bursting with pride. "We are innumerable."

And others cried:

"We are like fish in the sea!"

"Like pebbles on the beach!"

"Like stars in the sky! Like

atoms!!"

"Supposing you are,"

returned Trurl. "What of it? Do you spend all day counting

yourselves, and does that give you pleasure?"

"Know, O unenlightened alien,"

was their reply, "that when we stamp our feet, the very

mountains tremble, and when we huff and puff, it is a hurricane that

sends trees flying, and when we all sit down together, there is

hardly room enough to breathe!!"

"But why should mountains tremble

and hurricanes send trees flying, and why should there be hardly room

enough to breathe?" asked Trurl. "Is it not better when

mountains stay at rest, and there are no hurricanes, and everyone has

room enough to breathe?"

The Multitudians were highly offended

by this lack of respect shown to their mighty numbers and their

numerical might, so they stamped, huffed and puffed, and sat down to

demonstrate their multitudinality and show just what it meant.

Earthquakes toppled half the trees, crushing seven hundred thousand

persons, and hurricanes leveled the rest, causing the demise of seven

hundred thousand more, while those who remained alive had hardly room

enough to breathe.

"Good heavens!" cried Trurl,

packed in among the sitting natives like a brick in a brick wall.

"What a catastrophe!"

Which insulted them even more.

"O barbarous and benighted

alien!" they said. "What are a few hundred thousand to the

Multitudians, whose myriads are countless?! A loss that goes

unnoticed is no loss at all. You have seen how powerful we are in our

stamping, in our huffing and puffing, and in our sitting down.

Imagine then what would happen if we turned to bigger things!"

"You mustn't think," said

Trurl, "that your way of thinking is altogether new to me.

Indeed, it's well known that whatever comes in sufficiently large

quantities commands the general admiration. For example, a little

stale gas circulating sluggishly at the bottom of an old barrel

excites wonder in no one; but if you have enough of it to make a

Galactic Nebula, everyone is instantly struck with awe. Though

really, it's the same stale and absolutely average gas —only

there's an awful lot of it."

"We do not like what you say!"

they shouted. "We do not like to hear about this stale gas!"

Trurl looked around for the police,

but the crowd was too great for the police to push through.

"My dear Multitudians," he

said. "Permit me to leave your planet, for I do not share your

faith in the glory of great numbers when there is nothing more to

them than what may be counted."

But instead, exchanging a look and

nodding, they snapped their fingers, which set up a shock wave of

such prodigious force, that Trurl was hurled into the air and flew,

turning head over heels, for quite some time before landing on his

feet in a garden of the royal palace. Mandrillion the Greatest,

ruler of the Multitudians, approached; he had been watching the

constructor's flight and descent, and now said:

"They tell me, O alien, that you

have not paid proper tribute to the numerosity of my people. I

ascribe this to your general infirmity of mind. Yet, though you show

no understanding of higher matters, you apparently possess some skill

in the lower, which is fortunate, as I require a Perfect Adviser and

you shall build me one!"

"What exactly is this Adviser

supposed to do, and what will I receive for building it?"

inquired Trurl, brushing himself off.

"It should answer every question,

solve every problem, give absolutely the best advice and, in a word,

put the greatest wisdom entirely at my disposal. For this, you

shall receive two or three hundred thousand of my subjects, or more

if you like—we won't quibble over a few thousand."

Trurl thought:

"It would seem that an

overabundance of thinking beings is a dangerous thing, if it reduces

them to the status of sand. This king would sooner part with a legion

of his subjects than I with a pair of old slippers!"

But he said aloud:

"Sire, my house is small and

would not
hold
so many slaves."

"Fear not, O backward alien, I

have experts who will explain to you the endless benefits one may

derive from owning a horde of slaves. You can, for example, dress

them in robes of different colors and have them stand in a great

square to form a living mosaic, or signs providing sentiments for

every occasion. You can tie them in bundles and roll them down hills,

you can make a huge hammer—five thousand for the head, three

thousand for the handle—to break up boulders or clear forests.

You can braid them into rope and make decorative hangings, where

those at the very bottom, by the droll gyrations of their bodies, the

kicking and the squeaking as they dangle over the abyss, create a

sight that gladdens the heart and rejoices the eye. Or take ten

thousand young female slaves, stand them all on one leg and have them

make figure eights with their right hands and circles with their

left—a spectacle, believe me, which you won't wish to part

with, and I speak from experience!"

"Sire!" answered Trurl.

"Forests and boulders I can manage with machines, and as

for signs and mosaics, it is not my custom to fashion them out of

beings that might prefer to be otherwise employed."

"What then, O insolent alien,"

said the King, "do you want in return for the Perfect Adviser?"

"A hundred bags of gold!"

Mandrillion was loath to part with the

gold, but an idea came to him, a most ingenious plan, which however

he kept to himself, and he said:

"So be it!"

"Your Royal Highness shall have

his Perfect Adviser," promised Trurl, and proceeded to the

castle tower which Mandrillion had set aside for him as a workshop.

It wasn't long before they could hear the blowing of bellows there,

the ringing of hammers, the rasping of saws. The King sent spies to

have a look; these returned much amazed, for Trurl had not

constructed an Adviser at all, but a variety of forging,

welding, cutting and wiring machines, after which he sat down and

with a nail made little holes in a long strip of paper, programming

out the Adviser in every particular, then went for a walk while the

machines toiled in the tower all night, and by early morning the work

was done. Around noon, Trurl entered the main hall with an enormous

doll that had two legs and one small hand; he brought it before the

King, declaring that this was the Perfect Adviser.

"Indeed," muttered

Mandrillion and ordered the marble floor sprinkled with saffron and

cinnamon, so strong was the smell of hot iron given off by the

Adviser—the thing, just out of the oven, even glowed in places.

"You may go," the King said to Trurl. "Return this

evening, and then we shall see who owes how much and to whom."

Trurl took his leave, feeling that

these parting words of Mandrillion did not promise any great

generosity and perhaps even concealed some evil intention. Which

made him glad he had qualified the Adviser's universality with one

small yet far from trivial condition, that is, he had included in its

program an instruction to the effect that whatever it did, it was

never to permit the destruction of its creator.

Remaining alone with the Adviser, the

King said:

"What are you and what can you

do?"

"I am the King's Perfect

Adviser," replied the machine in a hollow voice, as if it spoke

from an empty barrel, "and I can provide him with the best

advice possible."

"Good," said the King. "And

to whom do you owe allegiance and perfect obedience, me or the one

who constructed you?"

"Allegiance and obedience I owe

only to His Royal Highness," boomed the Adviser.

"Good, good…" said

the King. "Now to begin with, I … that is, well …

I mean, I shouldn't like my first request to give the impression

that I was, shall we say, stingy … however, ah, to some

extent, you understand, if only to uphold certain principles—don't

you think?"

"His Royal Highness has not yet

deigned to say what it is that he wishes," said the Adviser,

propping itself on a third leg it put out from its side, for it

suffered a momentary loss of balance.

"A Perfect Adviser ought to be

able to read its master's thoughts!" snapped Mandrillion.

"Of course, but only on request,

to avoid embarrassments," said the Adviser and, opening a

little door in its belly, turned a knob that read "Telepathitron."

Then it nodded and said:

"His Royal Highness doesn't wish

to give Trurl a plug nickel? I understand!"

"Speak one word of this to anyone

and I'll have you thrown in the great mill, whose stones can grind up

thirty thousand of my subjects at a time!" threatened the King.

"I won't tell a soul!" the

Adviser assured him. "His Royal Highness doesn't wish to pay for

me—that's easily done. When Trurl comes back, simply tell him

there won't be any gold and he should kindly go away."

"You're an idiot, not an

adviser!" snorted the King. "I don't want to pay, but I

want it to look like it's all Trurl's fault! Like I don't owe him a

thing, understand?"

The Adviser turned on the device to

read the royal thoughts, reeled a little, then said in a hollow

voice:

"His Royal Highness wishes in

addition that it should appear that he is acting justly and in

accordance with the law and his own sacred word, while Trurl turns

out to be nothing but a despicable charlatan and scoundrel…

Very well. With His Royal Highness' permission, I will now seize His

Royal Highness by the throat and choke him, and if he would be so

good as to struggle and scream for help…"

"Have you gone mad?" said

Mandrillion. "Why should you choke me and why should I scream?"

"That you may accuse Trurl of

attempting to commit, with my aid, the crime of regicide,"

explained the Adviser brightly. "Thus, when His Royal Highness

has him whipped and thrown into the moat, everyone will say that this

was an act of the greatest mercy, since for such an offense one is

usually drawn and quartered, if not tortured first. To me His Royal

Highness will grant a full pardon, as I was but an unwitting tool in

the hands of Trurl, and everyone will praise the King's magnanimity

and compassion, and everything will be exactly as His Royal

Highness wishes it."

"All right, choke me—but

carefully, you dog!" said the King.

Everything happened just as the

Perfect Adviser said it would. True, the King wanted to have Trurl's

legs pulled off before they threw him into the moat, but somehow this

wasn't done—no doubt a mix-up in the orders, the King thought

later, but actually it was owing to the machine's discreet

intervention with one of the executioner's helpers. Afterward, the

King pardoned his Adviser and reinstated it at court; Trurl

meanwhile, battered and bruised, painfully hobbled home. Immediately

after his return, he went to see Klapaucius and told him the whole

story. Then he said:

"That Mandrillion was more of a

villain than I thought. Not only did he shamefully deceive me, but he

even used the very Adviser I gave him, used it to further his scurvy

scheme against me! Ah, but he is sadly mistaken if he thinks that